With Christmas but a memory and the salt team back at work, the filming done for Ready Steady Cook for transmission on March 4th, it is time for a trip.
So tortoises hibernating, Jack Russells in the kennel, and we are off on a food journey to see our distributor, Guido Bruzzo, in Italy.
Guido is doing a fantastic job getting Halen Môn on the best tables across Italy so we wanted to support him and his team, and we also wanted to listen to British chefs talking at a gastronomic congress: Identitia Golose. This is the Italian annual gathering of chefs and this year Britain was the guest country of honour.
Ryan Air provided what looked like a very cheap flight from Liverpool, except of course when you add on luggage, taxes and ‘check in fees’, not to mention a surcharge for paying by credit or debit card- how else do they suppose you can pay on line?
From Bergamo Airport to Milan we caught the efficiently organised coach, the 10 euro fare including seats with belts, essential wear as our driver spent much of the hour long journey checking his text messages.
After checking in to our hotel we went out to look for some food. Restaurant Dogana, near the beautiful cathedral, was very touristy looking with pictures of the food, but the staff were welcoming and the pizzas were from a wood fired oven. That was all we needed, with a bottle of wine, to prepare us for the start of the Congress.
We constantly referenced where we were by the Duomo; it is staggering in size being the 4th largest cathedral in the world. I bore Alison by wondering how you build to that accuracy without a proper crane or a laser spirit level and without the aid of mechanical and structural engineers eight centuries ago. Beats me.
Hotel Brunelleschi’s hard mattress with pillows the consistency of extremely al dente lasagne do not make for a good night, but no matter, off to the Congress.
Nice touches with the computer registering your name for all to see.
The spelling is phonetic and gives a clue to speaking bad Italian – just be a caricature of how you think the words should sound and people seem to understand.
We strolled in wondering where our cubic metre of display space was in the old Milan Stock Exchange and were immediately greeted by our smiling distributor, Guido.
I was as so pleased to see him I took a picture and he drily compared me to a Japanese tourist!
He guided us to the British stand and Valeria from the Consulate firmly showed us the limits of how much space we could use. With a few hundred chefs to convert we had to make our tiny area work hard and so out came posters, salt, samples, a moving picture frame, and more.
Sunday was all about trying to blag our way into the main auditorium to see and hear the chefs. No chance, the tickets were 500 euros each and the best we could do was to borrow the tickets to the VIP lounge and watch through a high window.
The side benefits of this were unlimited free coffee and the odd glass of wine and slice of salami.
We didn’t know any of the chefs until Wednesday’s presentations but were pleasantly surprised to bump into Sat Bains, a chef from Nottingham- www.restaurantsatbains.com whom Alison had contacted prior to the Congress to encourage him to use Halen Môn in his presentation. He hadn’t replied as he was on holiday at the time, but turned out to love the salt and used no other anyway. He took some samples from our cube and put them prominently on the counter so the camera couldn’t miss them.
That evening we were invited by Guido’s wife and daughter to join them at the restaurant GOLD. Any restaurant of that name has to have something about it and as this one turned out to be owned by Dolce and Gabana so we knew it would be a bit different.
Gold was the predominant theme appearing as it did in every room: on every piece of furniture, every curtain, every chair, every light bulb, and every course. The strangest pudding was Alison’s which looked exactly like a Cadburys mini roll wrapped in gold leaf which you ate as well.
Monday was our ‘official’ tasting day when we had all of 6 feet to tempt chefs to try the sea salt. We lost count of the number of times we talked about afumicato, speciato , and our new sea salt to be launched shortly, sedano.
We provided tomatoes, celery, chocolate, fudge and crisps and despite reluctance at first we had people trying new flavours.
Alison’s highlight was the stand opposite who supplied salami and choice pig products. Their promotional calendar featured 3 piglets asleep in a double bed being attended to by their owner who was offering a turn down service. Enquiring how you get 3 pigs to go to sleep in fine cotton sheets we were told they had had ‘some medicine before bed time’.
That night we had dinner with Selecta and their customers at the Paradosso Restaurant where we were introduced to each table and answered questions. This was fascinating because these were all people who loved food and were selling Halen Môn to the end users. Some owned restaurants; others were agents, along with their friends and family.
On Tuesday we had an intensely Italian meeting with Guido in a tiny coffee bar, discussing new flavours and packaging over espressos and mineral water.
We had booked to see Leonardo’s The Last Supper so were unsure whether or not to go back to the show or straight on to the museum. Well we thought, we’ll just call in and see what’s going on and who should we see immediately? Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck. We introduced ourselves and he chatted for a few minutes before going off to meet some journalists.
From there we made our way to the museum.
I particularly wanted to see it if only to spot Judas who has spilt the salt at the dinner table- this could be the origin of linking spilt salt to bad luck.
To see and absorb a 20 metre original Leonardo was memorable.
We decided to walk back to the hotel and managed to stumble across a charming shop filled with half price bargains which enables me to boast my tailor is in Milan. Quite how I like my sleeve buttons was something I had never considered before but this decision was eventually made and we were asked to come back in 24 hours to collect the finished garment.
Early to bed after a light supper with a friendly and welcoming waiter who presented us with a complimentary bruschetta on our arrival, and shook our hands when we left.
Wednesday was the big day, the day of the British chefs, and Valeria had been as good as her word and lent us two wrist passes, one of which said ACCESS ALL AREAS. We filtered into the auditorium holding them so that they looked like they had been bonded to our wrists for the last 3 days.
The chef before Heston was Andoni Luis Aduriz who served steamed potatoes with aioli as an amuse bouche, coating them in such a way that they looked like pebbles. He then placed them in a basket of real pebbles that had been warmed up to keep the dish hot. Gimmicky but fun.
On to Heston who we were told would show his video of the Christmas dinner he did for the BBC. It was fascinating as he explained the ideas behind it. He further charmed the audience with an envelope under the seat that had a film of frankincense to melt on your tongue and a wafer that smelt of baby – to make you think of the manger.
He added his personal memory of Christmas which was based on an uncle who smelt of cigars, leather and chestnuts and he gave us this encapsulated in dry ice that flowed into the room when he and his 2 chefs poured hot water onto the flowers on stage.
Most importantly he stressed again and again that while we could increase the perception of taste with new techniques opening up a new set of channels to the brain, this is no substitute for the quality of the ingredients or the skill of the cook. This was music to our ears as we are passionate about quality and providing exactly what it says on the tin. When it comes to the cooking we bow out …
Afterwards I wanted to talk to him again but he had a dozen interviews to do and looked shattered so I sat back and waited in the lounge where the reporters were literally kneeling at his feet.
We spotted Halen Môn in its Spanish livery being used by the Spanish chef Alex Atala in Brazil. Other British chefs came and went and we hung around all afternoon and eventually packed our stand up, gave the few tubes left to Selecta and prepared to leave.
We had only taken 2 sedano sea salts (if you haven’t guessed what sedano is you need to learn Italian) but there was hot competition for these and they somehow disappeared between our stand and our distributors stand along with a tasting glass. Maybe someone made them into a Bloody Mary?
So, slightly sad and downcast to be leaving without a proper chat with Heston, we said goodbye to all our colleagues at the Congress and tiredly walked back to our hotel, looking forward to a quiet evening.
I wasn’t that keen to go to the reception at the Consul’s house, despite the fact that he had been delightful at our meeting at the Congress. Alison persuaded me it was worth at least putting in an appearance so we turned up at Dr Laurence Bristow-Smith’s apartment with samples of Halen Môn for his chef.
We were welcomed in and Alison immediately started chatting with him and found out that the chef already used Halen Môn and it was actually on the table.
Dr Bristow-Smith also revealed he was a keen chef and promised some recipes for us to put on our website.
He asked us if we had enjoyed the show and found it useful and when we said yes, but we wished we had spoken more to Heston and the other chefs he said, well that was ok because they were all coming along shortly and he would make sure we were introduced.
Some time later in a state of disbelief we found ourselves drinking wine with the cream of British chefs- Sanjay Dwivedi, Shane Osborn, Maurizio Morelli (an Italian cooking in London) and, of course, Heston Blumenthal and two of his chefs.
We discussed our smoked Halen Môn with Heston and he had picked up that the smoky flavour is released by crunching a flake on the tongue and that was why he had used it on pizzas and steaks. Just as he was leaving he said it was fine for us to say publicly that we supplied The Fat Duck and that he used our sea salt. His last words were if it wasn’t a good product he wouldn’t be happy for us to say that. Those words were worth the entire trip, including all the trouble we subsequently had trying to get home.
From the Consul we had a quiet meal in our favourite restaurant with our favourite waiter welcoming us back like long lost relatives.
The next day was earmarked for bits of shopping- no not handbags or designer outfits but salami and espresso spoons- a long lunch, and our flight home.
We bought our stuff and treated ourselves to lunch at Peck’s, a combination of Harvey Nichols, Harrods and Selfridges, and then collected our luggage, took a taxi to the station, caught the bus to the airport and checked in.
Some 4 hours later we were told that all flights had been cancelled by fog but that we should report to the ticket desk for the next available flight.
We were managed like cattle in a coral prior to slaughter. As 700 or more people had had their flights cancelled at 15 minute intervals and had been told to return to arrivals and collect their baggage it was chaos. There were two staff, all the check in staff were absent having gone home, I guess, and there was a queue of at least 500 people. We made the lightening decision to leave the airport and to ring Nicki at home - never has a PA been so useful, thank you Nicki- and she logged on and got us booked on the next flight 24 hours later.
Quite what all the other poor passengers did I don’t know because the flight was pretty full and there was only one per day.
The same hotel put us up, at a higher price of course but in a better room, and we were in bed by 1.30am. Next day and after breakfast and we were so knackered we had to have a little lie down again while we pondered what our plan B was if the fog came again or if the flight confirmation number was incorrect.
Frissons of fear because we couldn’t see our reservation on the website and, great though Milan had been, another day was beyond the budget, and home, a child coming back from University, our dogs and work were all calling!
We went out for lunch to the stylish shopping arcade whose mosaic floor includes a bull which the Milanese stamp on for good luck. The exact body part is so worn away that it is more of a scrape than a stamp now but we both did it in the hopes that this flight would not be cancelled.
We felt like old hands now, taxi, bus, check in and almost the same seats in the airport lounge. This time the flight was late but got us to snowy Liverpool the same night and we were back home by 3am.